General Motors (GM) said years ago that it planned to take the lead in self-piloted vehicles by the end of the decade, and now, its keeping up with that goal by looking to release a nearly-autonomous vehicle by 2020.

GM showed off its "Super Cruise" system in a demonstration in Michigan last week. The system uses cameras and radar to steer the car, keeping it in between the lines on streets and highways.

This system is a result of other available tehnologies seen today, such as radar-guided cruise control and warning systems for when drivers start drifiting out of their lane. But Super Cruise takes it a step further by controlling the electric power steering.

The demonstration showed Super Cruise controlling a a Cadillac SRX SUV, and according to reporters in attendance, the technology looked good.

While the demo was a success, the autonomous steering system isn't ready for the road on a commercial level quite yet. Engineers say they still need to work on how the system reacts to road conditions, sensor reaction time, visibility of lane lines and interaction with the driver.

But engineers say the system could be ready by the end of the decade. It would initially appear in Cadillacs, but would likely be apart of the rest of the GM lineup later on.

Last week, Nissan said it will push aggressively to release an autonomous vehicle by 2020 as well. The automaker has been working with several colleges such as MIT, UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, Oxford, the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Virginia Tech, and almost every major university in Japan to develop the autonomous technology.

Nissan wants the autonomous cars to be available across the model range within two vehicle generations and to have an affordable price for consumers.

You are probably right but as the technology gets better and better eventually we can go full autonomous. Of course by then the guy who did the voice over for kit will probably be dead so I don't know how we are going to make it work right. :)

Initially I was totally against the idea. However, I've thought of a useful use-case: congested areas.It's been shown by Mythbusters that one car mis-applying the brakes can essentially cause a jam. If you handed control over the car, in theory could liaise with the the traffic management centre and optimise speeds etc to remove the jam (if all cars handed over control).Having said that, I don't see why cars don't add some kind of wifi to chat to each other to provide warnings to the drive that the car ahead (or a few ahead) is slowing down and prepare to brake, with emergency braking being automated to some degree.The fear, of course, is the havoc a hacker could wreak

I enjoy driving but I'd use it for long trips down interstate highways. All those little steering corrections get tiresome during a 20 hour trip.

The next step is self-assembling "trains" to reduce wind resistance, permit higher speeds, and reduce the number lanes needed for busy roads. The system could also be used with train tracks. The train would lose one set of trailing cars onto each siding and gain another set. Passengers would move to trailing cars when near their destination.

Same here. I enjoy driving in general. Just not driving for 10-15 hours straight on some god forgotten highway while having to stick to 10 above speed limit. And I would gladly use a self driving car then but it doesn't resolve any of the problems. For example I honestly don't believe that you'll be able to take a 3 hour nap while it drives itself. Both from a legal standpoint and a common sense standpoint. If so - that doesn't help me. It only makes things worse. I'll simply struggle even more to stay awake while sitting still and doing absolutely nothing except for looking at a straight empty road ahead of me.

2) Wouldn't it be better to spend the money on training people to drive, as compared to what I assume is the current policy of just giving driving licenses away to any idiot, or better yet funding a policy to just taking away the car from people who shouldn't be behind the wheel.

Yes, who sets the standards of what is a good driver and what is an idiot? I'd volunteer but then less than 1% of the world's population would be allowed to drive.